Viral news today speaks of a survey that ranks Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the most approved leader. This information comes from an online survey attributed to Political Intelligence, the proprietary platform of Morning Consult. The Global Leader Approval Tracker is Morning Consult’s online platform that conducts online polls with more than 11,000 daily polls on leadership approval from participants.

As per the survey, PM Modi ranked highest among the 13 leaders across whom this tool has mapped its online polling. As per Morning Consult, the sample for India is a representative of the literate population (which as per Statista stands at 69%), while for other countries it is wide across the population.

The PM’s 66% approval rate and 38% net approval rate are based on a sample of 2 persons for every 10,000 persons in the literate population. This is the lowest of all the sample size across the 13 countries. India has current population of approximately 1.39 billion, with its literate population at 69% or 965 million. A survey of 2,126 persons in a population of 965 million is thus the "basis" to measure popularity levels in India.

The next lowest sample size percentage is that of the United States, which is 6 out of every 10,000 persons. Joe Biden has an approval rating of 53% and a net approval rating of 14%. Scott Morrison of Australia has secured a 55% approval rating in the survey, where the sample size is the highest among the 13 countries – 88 persons for every 10,000 of the total population.

Morrison who is at rank 4, is followed by Angela Merkel, Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau. Yoshihide Saga has the lowest approval rating at 29% with a negative net approval of 31%. Japan's sample size is 28 out of every 10,000.

The average sample percentage across all the 13 countries whose leaders’ approval has been mapped, is 16 persons out of every 10,000 of the population. India’s sample size percentage stands at 1/8th of the average.

The seven day average, which this tool uses to give its analysis had a total sample size of 35,700, across a total sample population of 2.2 billion for the 13 countries. This means 16 persons out of every 10,000 persons participated in the survey.

As per Morning Consult, their online surveys are weighted in each country by Age, Gender, Region and in certain countries, on education breakdowns based on official sources. Respondents complete these surveys based on the appropriate language for their country.

Sources: https://morningconsult.com/form/global-leader-approval/

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

https://www.statista.com/